


Crush

by Guede



Series: Office Romance [1]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Alternate Universe - Romantic Comedy, Awkward Dates, Car Sex, Comedy of Errors, Crack Treated Seriously, Eavesdropping, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Humor, Jealousy, Love Confessions, M/M, Matchmaking, Meddling, Obsessive Behavior, Post-Break Up, Romantic Face Punching, Sarcasm, Workplace Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 05:30:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14909262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: David Villa wants you to know he fucking doesn’tdoromcoms (but if he did, he’d need a village).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Live Journal in 2010; reposting as it's a World Cup year.

The elevator doors opened and Raúl’s shoulders sagged slightly. Then he took a deep breath, disguised as a gulp of coffee, and stepped into the elevator. He brought his feet even with each other, then turned around and faced forward, in the time-honored manner of avoiding awkward eye-contact in small enclosed spaces. The doors closed with a soft shushing sound.

“See you’re in early again,” Villa said. “Still having problems with the New Year’s Eve program?”

Be polite and wait two minutes till he gets off at his floor, Raúl’s long years of experience told him. Raúl sipped more coffee. It was slightly rancid-tasting; he’d meant to clean out the filter on the machine about two days ago and had forgotten yet again. “No, it’s fine. I always get in this time of the morning.”

Villa snorted. “What, you usually sneak up the work elevator? Because I’ve never seen you and _I_ always come in at this time.”

The coffee was horrible. As soon as Raúl was in his office, he was going to dump it out and wonder that he could even stomach it, but he wasn’t there yet. He was in the elevator and he kept sipping at it. He felt vaguely disconnected from the disgusting taste, as if he was having an out-of-body experience and staring down at himself stuck in an elevator with a man who palpably hated him and everything he stood for and who didn’t mind pointing it out every single damn time they met.

Villa snorted again, as if Raúl’s lack of answer had just confirmed something for him.

Raúl had a sudden, incredibly melodramatic yet strangely satisfying vision of his coffee dripping down Villa’s head. He gritted his teeth.

The doors pinged open for Villa’s floor. He drew in a breath like he was going to speak, but then threw a shoulder in front of Raúl as he started to walk out.

“You can’t say that I’m coming in early again and that you’ve never seen me do that before,” Raúl’s mouth snapped. Raúl himself was still floating somewhere around the elevator ceiling, aghast at his inexplicable loss of manners. “Those two statements contradict each other and I’m _fine_ and so is the New Year’s program thank you very much so stop _stalking_ me.”

Villa jerked hard, then slapped his hand against the elevator door’s edge just as it tried to close. He shoved it to the side while spinning around to stare at Raúl. He looked shocked. The upstart fucking punk, some hitherto unknown part of Raúl snarled.

Then Villa’s brows went down. He rakishly adjusted his stance against the elevator frame. “It must be pretty weird doing it without Morientes this year.”

Raúl threw the coffee in Villa’s eyebrow-arching, provocative, bastard son of a whore face.

Loud shout. Flailing arms, body going backwards while in the background, people came running to see what had happened. The elevator doors, freed of Villa’s oppressive weight, slid smoothly shut, closing off Raúl’s view with shiny smooth metal. Gradually Raúl realized he still had coffee dripping down his fingers.

He looked down at it, then swore and put his hand out to send the elevator back down. He needed to—

\--it was cold coffee, he thought. He looked at his empty mug, then looked up at a chiming. It was his floor.

After a moment, Raúl got off the elevator. He stood by it for a few seconds, till Iker caught his eye, and then he gave himself a good shake and headed into his office. After dropping the mug into the sink, he got some tissues and cleaned off his hand. Iker came in and watched him toss the soiled tissues into the trash. The other man rubbed at his chin and forehead.

“I’m stressed,” Raúl said. “We’ve got cancellations left and right, hungover stars, tabloid issues and it’s stressful. That’s all. When Villa calls, tell him I’m very sorry but keep in mind that it was cold coffee and the only compensation we should have to make is a new shirt.”

Iker sighed. “What?”

“I threw my coffee at him because he’s an irritating moron who still hasn’t realized that I know he’s been following me around even _more_ since Fer—since Mori left and I’m stressed but that’s it. Aside from that, I’m _fine_.” Raúl noticed he had a little coffee stain himself on his shirt-cuff. He squeezed a tissue around it and reached for his phone; all the lines were already blinking their lights, waiting for him to take them off hold.

A folder dropped on his desk. “Okay,” Iker said. “We’ve got a problem with Cristiano again.”

Raúl took his hand away from the phone and reached for the folder. Then he took his hand back. He sat down in his chair and put his head in his hands. When he heard Iker move, he started to sit up, but then just swore and pulled at his hair. “Goddamn it, he could have at least waited until after the holidays just for—for professional reasons. That—that _bastard_. Every year—every year we would—and I’d make sure that—goddamn it. _Goddamn it_.”

“Er.” Iker breathed in sharply next to the desk. He shuffled some papers. “Look, I know you miss him but—”

“I don’t _miss_ him,” Raúl snapped, yanking himself straight. He stared out over his desk for a moment, then shook his head again. He pressed his fingers over his left eye and picked up the folder. “What about Cristiano?”

“I sent Kaká to take care of it,” Iker said. He shrugged at the look Raúl gave him, not entirely out of discomfort. “You might be fine but I’m going to stuff Gutí down the garbage chute next. If nothing else, that gets both Kaká and Cristiano out of our hair till lunch. And I’ll take care of Villa. And you want some coffee?”

After a moment Raúl managed a smile. He tapped the folder against his desk, then flipped it back to Iker. “Thanks. I would, thank you.”

* * *

Silva dropped his feet off his desk and sat up, eyes wide. “What happened to you?”

Mata flipped off his phone and craned his head for a better look. “Run-in with Casillas already? Didn’t you get my text? He’s on the warpath today. Cristiano had this platinum-plated pineapple—”

“No, it’s Raúl’s coffee.” David threw himself into the nearest empty chair. He wiped at his face with his hand and looked at the brownish smears on his fingers, then grimaced. “We ran into each other in the elevator.”

Mata flipped his phone back on. “Early again? Man, since he and Mori broke it off, he’s been working himself into an early grave. Never mind outrunning the boardroom rivals, he’ll take himself out of the picture at this ra—oh, sorry. I like him, remember?”

“Really?” David muttered. His shirt felt sticky. He pinched up the front and pulled it off him, then gave it a sniff. The coffee smelled pretty bad—not just in a spilled kind of way. It smelled like Raúl was making the crap at home and doing a lousy job of it. “Shit. He’s not even going to that coffeeshop Mori used to drag them to all the time.”

“David.” Silva waved his hand like he was in school. “So…why did Raúl throw a coffee at you?”

David slouched down and glowered at Silva, who should’ve been pushing through last-minute rewrites. Instead the kid stared back, then suddenly thumped his head into his desk. He slapped his hands on top of it for good measure.

“David, did you bring up Mori?” Silva muttered.

Mata got off the phone again. “Oh, my God, what? Were you nice abou—hell, it’s you. Guaje, he already thinks you hate his guts! That’s so stupid! And is bagels okay for lunch instead of sushi?”

“What happened to the sushi?” Silva asked, getting his head up. He absently rumpled his hair. Then he shook himself and glared at David again. “You deserved coffee in the face.”

“Bagels are fine.” David got out of the chair and crossed the room to his office. He opened up his closet, then remembered he’d used up his spare change of clothes for the thing last night. Shit. He had a meeting in half an hour and his shirt wasn’t the right color to hide coffee stains. “Mata, where’s your spare shirt?”

“Joaquín happened to the sushi,” Mata called out. “Gonna get the shirt, back in a sec!”

Well, at least David could get the coffee off his skin. He stripped off his shirt, assessed it and then balled it up and tossed it into his wastebasket. Then he noticed that his desk phone had blinking lights. He went over and tried one line, had a short nasty conversation and hung up.

When he went back out into the other room, both Silva and Mata were gone and Cazorla was at Silva’s desk, with his feet up on it and a phone pinched between ear and shoulder, and a proof of the weekly schedule that he was marking up with a highlighter. “You’re an idiot, you need to say sorry and you need to stop being an ass to Raúl at some point,” Cazorla said, not looking up. “Silva got a call that the short’s back on and went to go harass the editing team. Oh, yeah, and Albiol called down to say that Raúl said to Iker that he was having lunch in and they need extra help because Ramos is stuck in an ER because of something with a chorizo and a plunger, and aside from that meeting you, I mean we, can’t really do much till the sound guys get back to us. Don’t fuck this one up. I think that’s everything.”

David opened and closed his mouth a couple times. It was already cramping up from clenching his way through the morning commute. “Why didn’t anybody ask me to approve…any of that?”

Cazorla peeked over the schedule. “Aren’t you doing that right now?”

After a moment, David just scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Okay. Fine, it all sounds fine. I’ll go see Raúl in the cafeteria. I don’t know how long it’ll take to get through his flunkeys, so make sure Joaquín gets off his ass and does something about the props-sourcing problem.”

“’kay,” Cazorla said, back to highlighting. “Maybe you should bring him some coffee. You know, since he wasted his on you.”

“It was too shitty to drink anyway. He’s depressed, he hasn’t gotten his tongue amputated,” David muttered, going back to his office.

“And put on a shirt!” Cazorla shouted after him. “After you get the coffee off your chest! Try to be respectable for once!”

David slammed the door shut.

* * *

Kaká came back shortly before lunch with a face like a sixteenth-century martyr and the information that Cristiano would still make the program. Raúl thanked him, asked him to see to some administrative things and went back to blackmailing and/or guilt-tripping every insider connection they had. Eventually Raúl started getting answering machines instead of secretaries saying that people were out to lunch, and went to go eat himself.

The cafeteria was pretty empty. It also looked…different. It took a while for Raúl to realize they’d remodeled one end. He hadn’t eaten in it for a couple years, probably; when he didn’t have a business lunch somewhere else, Fernando was—Raúl bit his lip and helped himself to a piece of pie. Then he found himself a seat in an empty corner and started organizing his food around his laptop, PDA and mobile. Everyone might be out to lunch but at this time of year that just meant he had a breather to plan his lines of attack.

A chair scraped nearby and Raúl frowned but ignored it. Then his table jiggled slightly so he accidentally hit ‘send’ on an email. He cursed and grabbed his laptop, certain that his day had just acquired another small taste of hell, and…then sighed in relief when the error message popped up. Whatever they’d done to the cafeteria, it hadn’t improved the wireless reception. He gratefully clicked ‘cancel’ and then looked up.

Villa was standing there, one hand on the table. In his other hand he had what smelled like a cup of coffee—Raúl stared at it. It moved away.

“I’m not here to throw it at you,” Villa said irritably.

“I’m sorry,” Raúl said. He grimaced. “About this morning. I overreacted. And I’m very—”

“It’s for you.” Villa shoved the cup into Raúl’s face. He looked even more irritated when Raúl didn’t take it, and thumped it down so hard on the table that he nearly spilled it on Raúl’s phone. “That shit you threw at me earlier was so disgusting I wouldn’t even give it to a rat. This is better.”

After a moment, Raúl put his hand over his mobile. He slid it out of harm’s way. “Well, thank you.”

“Okay,” Villa said. He was still standing there and he didn’t seem interested in leaving any time soon. Then he saw Raúl looking at him and jerked his shoulders. He nodded at the coffee. “What? You don’t believe me?”

“What? Oh, about the coffee. No, I believe you, I just don’t want any coffee right now,” Raúl muttered, turning away. The wireless connection was back on and Raúl did have an email to send out, and it wasn’t about hoping being rude would be enough to make Villa disappear. “Again, I’m sorry about earlier but I’m glad that we’ve managed to work out…Villa.”

The other man finished sitting down across from Raúl as noisily as he’d yanked over the chair. He straddled it with the back against his front so he could hang his arms over the top, and then resumed glowering at Raúl to do something Raúl wasn’t doing.

After sending off the email, Raúl put the top of his laptop down and then leaned his head against his hand. “Yes, David?”

“I heard about Ramos,” Villa said abruptly.

Raúl couldn’t quite suppress his grimace, and then he just gave up and started rubbing his temple. “Oh. I suppose you would.”

“Well, your personnel problems lately haven’t exactly been state secrets,” Villa snorted. Then he did something odd: he ducked his head and grabbed the middle of his face.

Quick check at the table. The cup of coffee was still there. True, Raúl had a white-knuckled grip on it and was having those visions of the cup smashed into Villa’s face again, but he hadn’t actually done it this time. Villa was talking.

Raúl looked back up and Villa had taken his hand off his face to try to knead the table’s edge. He was making the whole table move, but he didn’t seem to notice even though he was staring at the table with enough intensity to make out the atoms that made it up. “Look, I just wanted you to know that things have been going fine with my shows so my crew and I have got some time on our hands. This afternoon we’ve got nothing scheduled except some—”

“Villa, listen, you have every right to be mad at me but that doesn’t translate to forcing me to sit here while you—” Raúl just caught hold of himself and took a deep breath “—you’re doing well. Good. I’m glad. I’m sorry, but I’ve got a lot of work and I don’t have the time to celebrate with you, so—”

“Do you want me to help you or not?” Villa suddenly demanded, shoving himself halfway over the table. Too far over: he started to lose his balance and fall on Raúl’s computer. To his credit, his reflexes were good and he slapped down his hand.

Unfortunately he did it right as Raúl was yanking his laptop out of the way, and instead managed to catch Raúl’s hand instead of the table. He was as forceful with that as everything else, and for a moment Raúl heard the bones in his hand creaking.

Then Villa was back on the other side of the table, looking rattled, and Raúl was just…done with this. Completely done with this. “David, can you just leave me alone?”

“I—I didn’t—I mean, I don’t have anything to do so I can do your work!” Villa was looking at Raúl and looking at the table and at every wall and everywhere else. His hands didn’t seem to know what to do with his hair and kept getting stuck on his left ear.

“I…” Raúl shook his head. Then he got up and began to pack up his things. He wasn’t halfway through his lunch but suddenly he wasn’t hungry anymore. “David. To be honest with you, there’s a good chance the end of this season’s going to be the end of me. So you really only have to sit tight and wait another week, and you’ll be able to step right into my shoes. No need to rub it in.”

“Oh, shit,” Villa muttered. His hands finally decided on whacking their palms into the table as he stood up. Then he grabbed Raúl’s laptop right out of Raúl’s hands.

After a moment, Raúl managed to shut his mouth. He exhaled roughly through his nose and picked up the coffee.

“Don’t throw it! Don’t—look, this went all…wrong. I just meant—I didn’t mean I want to take over. I just…” Villa seemed to be having a weird spasm of the mouth. Also, he was juggling around Raúl’s laptop and not paying too much attention to catching it. “…look, do you need help or something?”

“No. I’m fine.” Raúl darted forward and grabbed back his laptop just as Villa didn’t catch it. He had to drive his elbow into the table to steady himself and that hurt, but he just blinked through the white pain as he pulled himself back. He scooped up everything else and got around the table before Villa could finish his next question. “I’m _fine_ , David. Good day.”

* * *

David made a beeline for his office. He didn’t look right or left.

“You fucked it up,” Silva said from somewhere behind him. “Guaje! How do you fuck up a two-second conversation!”

“It was at least five minutes and shut up.” The door jumped open from David’s kick, then stopped abruptly. Inside the room, somebody hissed in pain. David came to a halt and stared, and seriously contemplated trying another kick. Then he bit his tongue and slid to the side of the door.

Silva came up on the other side, pulling at the hair on one side of his head. The eyeball closest to the hair-pulling was scrunched shut, while the other one was wide open and fixed on David. “Did you at least remember to say sorry for this morning?”

“I gave him the coffee,” David muttered. He crossed his arms over his chest and cleared his throat loudly.

The door to his office opened and Figo came out. He did his eye-flick in David’s direction before strolling out like it was his office. “Villa, I was going to ask if you had any projects-in-waiting you wanted to run by me in your spare time, but my ankle is suggesting I just order you to pitch in with Raúl. I agree with it. Get your ass upstairs.”

David…had nothing to say. He’d been expecting Joaquín or something more in…well, this was in keeping with his day. With his entire _life_.

“Oh, yeah, the _coffee_ ,” Silva was continuing, like Figo wasn’t even there. “You gave him coffee. You probably just shoved it in his face without explaining what the hell it was for, and got it all screwed up from the beginning, and now he thinks you’re a nutcase on top of hating his guts. Like _coffee_ is going to fix that.”

“You said to bring it! It wasn’t my idea!” David snapped.

Silva rolled his eyes. “No, Santi did. And it was a good idea till you got hold of it. You’re so lucky that doesn’t stretch to our productions too or we’d be so fucked.”

Figo had stopped to observe with a faintly indulgent smirk on his face, one hand hooked in a jeans pocket. He chuckled. “The truth of the day, I believe. Villa, do try to tone down your hapless aggression. I’m not in the mood to visit any more staff members in the ER or to bail Raúl out of jail.”

“Oh, fine, I’ll go up so would you quit riding my…and why would Raúl be the one in jail? Then who’d be in the ER?” David said.

For some reason Figo and Silva looked at each other. Then Figo patted Silva on the shoulder and said something that made Silva throw up his hands in classic desperation. “And don’t forget about the New Year party!” Figo said, stepping around Silva for the door. “I expect to see you all there, relaxing after another wonderful program.”

“Bastard,” David muttered.

“Well, you would know,” Silva muttered. He didn’t even try to hide from David’s look, but just shoved a pile of folders into David’s arms. “ _Any_ way. This should get you up to date on where Raúl’s at right now. I think he’s actually in a meeting with the talent for the next half-hour, so you’ve got time to read up before you go. You’re welcome, Guaje.”

David eyed the other man. “Mata’s been a lousy influence on you. You weren’t nearly this much of a smartass when you first showed up.”

“Don’t blame Mata. I learned a lot more watching you than from anybody else around here.” Then Silva gave him a beaming smile, as if he meant that as a compliment, and swanned off. Now _that_ was classic Mata, no matter what Silva said.

After a moment, David looked down at his armful. One folder was slipping and he adjusted his arms to hold it better. Then he took a deep breath and carried it all into his office.

* * *

“Then what are we doing at twenty till?” Raúl asked, rapidly flipping through the script. He found the line he was looking for and crossed out the whole page. Then he realized he was hearing people walking around, keys being typed, phones being rung, but no answer. He bit down a nasty comment and stared at the script for a few seconds. He was having a vision of just trashing it and walking out and downstairs and maybe going all the way to…

…well, he had no idea. No ideas that didn’t involve painful memories, at any rate. So Raúl took a deep breath, reminded himself he would behave like a professional, damn it, and looked up with his mouth open to ask his question again.

“Two choices, cut to commercial early or try to squeeze out another one minute fifty from Benzema. I’ve never worked with him before but I’d go for commercial because we can actually get another one lined up before the end of the day,” Villa said, showing up out of nowhere. He had a big packet of highlightered and scribbled-on paper in one hand that looked suspiciously like a script. “From what Iker was screaming into the phone over there, I don’t think you’ll get Benzema on a line before then.”

Raúl’s mouth was still open. He shut it. He put his script down on a nearby table and started to reach for his temple. Then he changed his mind and looked around for a phone. “David. Is this about earlier?”

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Villa abruptly said. Then he dropped back a bit and looked like he’d just thrown up and might need to throw up a bit more. He worked his mouth some before rubbing at it. “I mean, this morning. I was kind of a jerk in the elevator. Morientes was an asshole for leaving—”

“David, get out.” Raúl grabbed something and pulled it up in front of himself. Then he saw that it was a stapler, not a phone. He didn’t really care so much, oddly enough. “I’m just—I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I don’t have the _time_ or the—”

“Figo’s making me help you, okay? So don’t blame me about that. Especially since I offered before but you wouldn’t listen and now we’ve got to do it Figo’s way,” Villa threw out. His eyes were a little crazed by this point, like he didn’t even know what was going on. He started pointing randomly with the script. “Fuck. I mean—fuck, I’m sorry, okay? About lunch too. I’m really sorry, but there’s a big fucking two minute hole in your New Year’s program and the talent is full of shit and this all just has to work, okay?”

Breathe. In. Out. Listen to what the man was saying, not what he was pretending to say. That was what Raúl did. He could do it. He still could do it, despite having his partner suddenly ditch him and having his _partner_ ditch him for goddamn _France_ and all right. He’d heard something about Figo in all of Villa’s babbling and Luís had said something about getting help when he’d been by earlier. All right. “Fine,” Raúl said. “What commercial?”

“Ah. Comm—right. Ah.” Villa was stuttering, Raúl vaguely noted. And recovering just as Raúl noticed. He wasn’t waving the script around anymore. “Well, couple of options. You can ask one of the sponsors we have already to repeat, or we can try hitting somebody new. You had a waitlist for the initial bids. It’s pretty damn late but—”

“We can’t repeat at twenty till. By then we’ll be at ninety percent of the peak audience and they’ll notice a repeat. Find someone new.” Raúl put the stapler down and just happened to see where the phone was at the same time. He considered it, then turned away and found his copy of the script again. No time to ask Luís what the hell he’d been thinking. “Wait, I’ve already got Higuaín on that for the hole at eleven three.”

“Yeah, I thought about asking him but he was having some screaming fit with Gago, so Silva’s on it.” Something beeped and Villa looked down, frowning. He dug a mobile out of his jeans. “Right. He’s got some maybes he’ll forward to your—”

“PDA. I’m too busy to carry around the laptop right now,” Raúl said. He flipped back through the script to the section he’d crossed out, then made a note by it. Then he started reading slowly through the rest of it. “While you were visiting Gonzalo, did you get from him where he’s at with the overlap at eleven thirty-seven?”

Villa juggled his mobile and his script copy. He did a better job of that than he had with Raúl’s laptop. “No, but I looked at it and I think if we cut out some of the intro banter, that’ll take care of that. The joke about Giuly and the hatcheck girl is stale anyway.”

“I wrote that joke,” Raúl said. He found the other spot he’d meant to update and made a note. Then he looked up. He frowned at the strangely…doomed expression on Villa’s face. “It was a place-filler till one of the writers got to it. They left it in?”

“You need new writers,” Villa blurted out.

Raúl sighed. “I know, but not now. Go find Van der Vaart, he was in—”

“Charge of that section, I know. I’ll see you in two.” By the time he finished speaking, Villa was already walking away.

Good, Raúl thought as he turned the pages to cross out that joke. One more thing taken care of. Then he paused. He looked back up and found Villa’s retreating back, and stared at it for a good minute.

Well, however it got done, he finally concluded. He turned around and went to go find Iker to update him.

* * *

Mata nodded seriously, scribbling notes with one hand. Then he cheerfully said bye to whoever was on the other line and hung up. By the time the phone hit the cradle, his expression had completely u-turned. “Asshole,” he said, gesturing rudely at the phone. “But okay, we’ve got confirmation that Benzema’s at least in town. Hey, you look like Raúl hasn’t thrown coffee at you again. You apologize?”

David dropped his script copy on the desk and picked up Mata’s notes. He skipped through the cartoons to the actual important stuff. “Yeah.”

“Good. How’d he take the news that you’re helping him out?” The phone rang and Mata leaned over to check out the callerID, then gingerly lifted the phone just free of the cradle. He held it up long enough for them to both hear the ‘hello?’ before letting it drop hard.

“All right. Anybody break up the Argentines yet?” David asked. He gave Mata back the notes and then grabbed the phone. “For Christ’s sake, we need everybody kicking ass today. They can kick each other’s ass tomorrow, if they’ve still got the energy.”

Mata was just sitting there and…and contemplating David, like David was some puzzle to be worked out. Then he sighed and shook his head. “The more you’re a jerk to him, the more he’s going to laugh when somebody finally lets him know that actually, you’re in love with him. Well, not in love so much as absolutely scarily deeply fucking obsessed hey I think you got through.”

About to tear Mata a new one, David jerked to a stop. He heard Joaquín in his ear again, gritted his teeth and told the other man to get upstairs, and then hung up. Then he glared at Mata. “If I come back in ten and Higuaín’s not got at least three ads ready to run, I’m going to kick _your_ ass.”

“Okay, one—I _always_ have to break up Albiol and Albelda so come _on_ , I have to do that up here too? And two, can you just not say something nice to Raúl? Is it physically impossible for you or something?”

David was…out the door. “And Gago had better get Cristiano’s publicist back on the phone! We saw that Twitter update!”

Silva was coming in. He saw David and grinned. “Fuck Gago, I got that deep-sixed. So what’s up? Still telling Raúl you’re a bastard?”

“Shut up and go break up the Argentines,” David snapped. He went to go find Raúl.

* * *

The dull ache in Raúl’s neck suddenly sharpened. He quickly put his arm down, but it was too late: the ache continued to blossom into a full-blown nerve pinch. Then the phone rang and out of reflex Raúl grabbed it up, only to fall back into his chair, clutching the side of his neck and barely suppressing his hiss. “Hello?” he forced out. “Oh. Oh, great. All right, thanks. I’ll owe…no, really. I’ll remember this.”

Raúl got through the farewells and hung up, and then started to sink gratefully back into his chair. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his door open. He closed his eyes, wondering if he could just pretend he’d fallen asleep. Or maybe he wouldn’t have to pretend. Pain in his neck notwithstanding, he was so tired that he was already halfway asleep.

“Just heard back,” Villa’s voice said.

It took a long, hard effort for Raúl to open his eyes. He squinted up at Villa, at the man’s serious face and planted stance, and then he pulled himself up with a grunt. His neck screeched at him and he stopped sharply. Then he exhaled slowly. He put his hand up to squeeze at his neck. “Yes or no?”

“Yes. So that’s the last one.” Villa cocked his head for something from Raúl.

At this point all Raúl really felt was a kind of dull acceptance, fine, done so he could get on with collapsing. But he made himself nod and sit up a little straighter. “Good. Zinedine called me back and we fixed that problem, so I think that’s everything. Great. The program’s on.”

“It’s going to end in about seven minutes.” Then Villa checked his watch. “Six. Why aren’t you in the production booth?”

Raúl couldn’t even muster up the energy to picture himself throwing something at Villa. He closed his eyes briefly and breathed slowly. Then he looked up at the other man. “Thank you, David. I really appreciate all the help you’ve given us tonight. I think that that’s all.”

“Oh, don’t palm me off with that bullshit,” Villa snarled. “I’m not buying it. I never have.”

“Fine,” Raúl muttered. He pushed at his spasming neck some more, then took his hand off and put it on his knee. After a moment, he pushed himself back into the chair. “Fine, David. I’m not there because I just spent the last twelve hours making certain it’ll run so smoothly I don’t have to be there, and you just confirmed that it will, and so why do I need to be there?”

It was quiet for a few seconds. So quiet that Raúl almost, bizarrely, hoped that Villa had just…disappeared.

“You know, you can’t just do this every year from hereon out,” Villa said, a little less edged than before. “I mean, you’re doing it without him now. You _did_ it without him. So you should be in there.”

“God,” Raúl exhaled. He shut his eyes. “David, what did I do? What goddamn thing did I do to you? No, don’t tell me—I’m very sorry and I’ll fix it or compensate you or whatever you want if you will just _leave me alone_.”

Villa muttered something to himself. Then he came around the desk, but stopped when Raúl kicked the chair away from him. He muttered to himself again before exhaling loudly. “I brought you a drink. Well, Iker was bringing it, but he needs to be in there, so I said I’d get it to you.”

“There’s my desk.” Raúl moved his hand. “Go ahead and leave it there, and then get out of my office.”

Something clinked down on the desk, but that wasn’t followed by Villa’s footsteps. Time stretched on a minute, then another. Then Raúl opened his eyes. Villa was still there. There, and looking at Raúl, and looking like he wanted to punch something. Not that different from normal, except for flinching when he saw Raúl was looking at him.

“Look, I just…wanted to say that whatever happened with you two, and I’m not going to go further than that because I—whatever happened, it didn’t make you any less good at your job. And you’re good. You’re still the one everyone wants to be,” Villa said suddenly, awkwardly. He was twisting in place the way most people just twisted their hands together. “He didn’t make you that, and he didn’t take that away when he left, and you should see that because you deserve it. Okay?”

Raúl sat there and listened to that. He looked at Villa but the other man seemed completely serious. 

Then Villa turned sharply away. He paused with his head turned towards his shoulder, as if he had something else to say, but he didn’t say anything. After a moment, he rolled his shoulders and started towards the door.

“David,” Raúl started, pulling himself up. That pain in his neck made him grab for the edge of his desk. He cursed and bit the inside of his mouth, and made himself look back up.

Villa was halfway out the door, but he’d stopped again and was waiting for Raúl to finish.

“David. Thank you. I did need your help today to make it happen,” Raúl said after a moment. Then he grinned; he could see the confusion on Villa’s face and he didn’t quite understand himself either, but he did know he needed to laugh a little. “Thank you. Thank you for the drink. And have a happy New Year’s. Tell everyone at the party that for me too.”

“Sure,” Villa said blankly. He made a little move towards the door, cocked his head like he wasn’t sure why he’d done that. Then he shrugged and went out. He didn’t shut the door after him.

Raúl thought about calling after man to ask him to do that. But Raúl’s hand slipped off the seat and hit the lever, and then Raúl grabbed it and let the chair back down. He couldn’t hear Villa anymore and he was tired—he had something on his desk. He turned his head just enough to glimpse the cup there, then closed his eyes.

* * *

Mata was staggering under Cazorla, who was making dangerously florid gestures with a magnum bottle of champagne, but he struggled onwards till he’d reached the couch. At that point the bottle came close to smashing in David’s nose one times too many, so David relieved Cazorla of that while Mata sort of rolled the man off his back and onto the cushions. Cazorla giggled and burped, and opened bleary eyes in David’s direction. “You say anything nice to him?”

“Yeah. Listen, if anyone asks, he went home early. Says Happy New Year to everyone, too, but nobody’s checking his office, all right? He looks like shit,” David muttered, looking for somewhere to put the champagne.

Silva showed up and took the bottle off David’s hands, and then took a long enough swig from it to make Xavi across the room arch a brow. Then Silva slapped David on the back with his free hand. “Great! Finally, he gets to see your non-asshole side. Now for the next step.”

“You’re…it’s only quarter past.” David took back the bottle and peered more closely into Silva’s face. “And you’re already smashed. Who’s the idiot who gave you the…the port.”

“Actually, spilled the port on my shoes, didn’t get to have any. But it covers up the tequila shot smell,” Silva beamed. He cuddled up to David’s left side, then laughed when David pried him off only to find the champagne bottle gone. “But! Coffee! Oh, wait, no, missing a step. Did you say happy new year?”

David turned around to stuff Silva into the couch, only to find Mata stuffing the now-empty champagne bottle under the couch. He sighed and gave his three subordinates his best disappointed look, and they drunkenly stuck out their tongues at him. And then Cazorla rolled over and slurred a yell for Joaquín, who appeared out of nowhere with a tray of festive red- and green-sugar-rimmed shot-glasses.

“Anyway! Ask him for coffee! Since you totally fail! At bringing it to him!” Silva had completely lost control of his enunciation. And his tongue. He kept wiggling it at David in between exclamations. “He’s gonna be in early again tomorrow.”

“It’s a holiday and he’s never on the skeleton staff list,” David pointed out. Not that he thought he should even bother arguing with a sloshed Silva, but he was somewhat distracted by the fact that Cazorla had jumped over the tray and into Joaquín’s arms, and was sticking his tongue down Joaquín’s throat. And Joaquín hadn’t spilled the drinks. “One of the perks of being—”

Mata squirmed off the couch, snagged a shot and regarded David with the kind of misty condescension only booze could produce. “Guaje, he got dumped by Mori for _France_ on their tenth _anniversary_ ,” Mata said. “He’s gonna come in. Come in and drive Guardiola up the _wall_ , old flame or not. I already heard Figo plotting to distract him with a new docusoap pilot, so you might as well get in on it.”

“Wait, what? What was that about Guardiola?” David snapped, distracted again.

Cazorla pried his face off Joaquín so he and Mata and Silva could all share impossibly knowing looks, given their respective distances from the state of sobriety. Then he gestured for David to get closer. David looked pointedly at the limbs Cazorla still had twisted around Joaquín, who was just smirking at everything, and Cazorla sighed. “He was B.M.”

“Before Morientes,” Silva explained. “Well, actually, I guess it’s how you think about it…from Guardiola’s perspective Raúl would be B.F.—Before Fi—okay! Stop glaring! Show up tomorrow morning and ask Raúl for coffee before he does some stupid rebound thing, okay? And try, um, try not to be all…what’s the word…”

“Bastard,” Joaquín supplied.

“Yeah! Don’t be a bastard about it,” Silva said. “Or that’ll make Guardiola look really not-Mori and not-you, and…yeah, just keep being nice. You did it once, you can do it again.”

* * *

“David,” Raúl said, surprised.

“Villa,” Pep said, surprised.

Villa’s eyes started to roll and he had to make a visible effort to not let them finish it. He nodded. “Yeah, that’s me. Now that the introductions are over…what are we doing?”

After a long moment, Raúl and Pep looked at each other. Then Raúl buried his nose in his coffee and Pep moved forward a little. Pep cleared his throat in a faux-authority figure sort of way. He put one hand on his hip and used his other to tug at his v-neck. “I had no idea you were coming in, David. You’re not on the list…I heard you had a pilot greenlighted. Thought you would’ve been out till about now celebrating with the others.”

“Yeah, well, this year I decided not to start off by waking up in a puddle of my own vomit,” Villa muttered. He glanced down at his feet, shuffled them, and then raised his head to look over Pep like he was going to start something nasty. “Resolution after that was not to put up with other people’s bullshit, so I guess that covers about everything.”

Pep caught the vibe and subtly stiffened up, and Raúl silently cursed himself for being too decent just before stepping in between the two men. “Did you just get in?” he asked Villa. “See the blogs yet?”

“No, why?” Villa shot back. His brows were trying desperately to twist themselves into suspicious knots. He made his spine into a tight S-shape craning around Raúl to look at whatever Pep was doing. “Who got paparazzi’d?”

“Cristiano. You want a coffee? You look thirsty.” Raúl grabbed Villa by the arm and started hauling him away from the scene. With any luck, someone would run up and give Pep something to do before they all saw why Pep was the only person on the planet who could make Luís Figo duck under a desk. “Is everything all right with you? You _aren’t_ on the list.”

“Yeah, well, neither are you, so why are you here?” Villa yanked his arm free and then turned on Raúl, his chin jerking up and down like a squirrel baiting a cat at the window.

Coffee in the—no. It was hard but Raúl just managed to turn his jerk into a long sip at his cup. Then he had to gulp it down quick because it was a lot hotter than he remembered. His lips kept burning and he rubbed hard at them to make it stop.

“Never mind. Sorry. Um.” Villa scratched at the back of his head and didn’t look at Raúl. “I mean, you can come in whenever you want.”

That odd moment last night _had_ been a figment of Raúl’s stress, Raúl decided. “I really don’t know what you’re doing here, David, but if you want work, there’s always plenty of it. You don’t have to act like you have to wait for me—you know you don’t.”

“That’s not what I—oh, goddamn it.” With an exasperated sigh, Villa yanked his hand out of his hair and nearly took off Raúl’s nose in the process. He didn’t seem to notice since he immediately threw up both hands and appeared to try to scrape off his face with his nails, and made a good attempt at taking off Raúl’s face as well. “Fuck. Look. You looked pretty bad last night and I just came in because I wondered if you’d actually slept in your office too, and you should cut that out.”

Raúl breathed in and out very slowly. He flexed his hand around his coffee.

Villa did notice that. His eyes shot to Raúl’s cup and then he started to put up his arms in a defensive posture. Then he grimaced and just crossed them over his chest instead. “Okay, this is all coming out wrong.”

“If this is coming out wrong, then I don’t really want to be around for it to come out right,” Raúl said reflexively.

“I just think you should take a break. Not because of anything at work or whatever, but just…you need a break. That’s all,” Villa mumbled, staring at the floor. “I’m not trying to take over your job. I just want you to stop looking like shit.”

“Oh. Well…thank you. Thank you very much for the concern.” Raúl waited a moment, but that seemed to be it. He took a step away.

Villa looked up, but he didn’t say anything. His mouth was sealed up tight and he was staring at Raúl the way he always did, like he could peel off Raúl’s skin with his eyes alone. He didn’t move when Raúl took another step, so Raúl turned around and headed to his office. If Villa really was looking for something to do, eventually Pep would notice and hijack him and hopefully keep him away from Raúl for the rest of the day. Speaking of that, maybe…

Shaking his head, Raúl finished off his now-cold coffee and rechecked his voicemail. Nothing from anyone in Cristiano’s camp, and Kaká wasn’t going to be out of church for another hour. He picked up a pen and tapped it against the desk, thinking about what Pep had offered him for the day. It wasn’t much but…Raúl frowned. No, it wasn’t much and Pep could have given him a lot more without any problem.

Gradually Raúl realized he was staring at his reflection in his window. He did look awful: gaunt cheeks, bloodshot eyes, rumpled hair. Too many shadows.

He turned away with a shrug. It was a window in a dark room, not exactly the most accurate mirror. He picked up his mobile and started to scroll through his messages there, then abruptly put it down. A sigh started out of his mouth and unexpectedly turned into a yawn halfway through, and then Raúl just gave up. He hit ‘Pep’ on the speed-dial.

* * *

“That still doesn’t mean he gets to shove me face-first into rewrites and scream in Catalan!” David snarled, throwing himself down the last few steps. He kicked open the door and got a foot out before realizing it was too cold even for his—deservedly righteous—rage, and hastily retreated back inside the lobby. “Who the fuck made him king, anyway?”

*…um, the board of directors? Owfuck my leg!* Silva faded out for a moment. *Okay. Okay. So Guardiola told you to get out?*

David got one arm into his coat and then dropped the rest of the coat. He tried to hitch it up as high as he could on the one arm so he could find the other armhole, but no matter how he twisted around, he couldn’t do it. “No, he told me to go stick my hand into my ass and pull out my head, and maybe then I’d be tall enough to qualify as a human being. What the hell does that mean?”

*That he’s got like, half a meter on you? I dunno, I’m hungover. Wait a second.* There was a jerky crackling noise and muffled voices, and then Mata came protesting onto the line. *…hungover too, jerk! Okay, what’s up, what happened with Raúl?*

“Why am I even talking to you anyway?” David sighed. “Why are you calling at this hour? With all the cava you were drinking, shouldn’t you still be puking in the toilet?”

Mata was quiet for a second. *You really want to hear that part?*

“I’m going to hang—” David turned around, making one last stab at the other coat-sleeve, and saw Raúl walking out of the elevator. The other man spotted him and froze, expression almost rearranging itself before it went politely smooth. “Later, kids.”

*Kids! Santi, take over, ‘cause I’m gonna punch him through the--*

Raúl came slowly up on David’s left. At first it looked as if he was going to just try passing David to the doors, but then he pursed his lips and stopped in front of David.

“Going home?” David finally came up with. Then he wanted to smack himself, but _then_ he was suddenly aware of the fact that he was standing around with his coat half-on and contorting unsuccessfully to get the other half on, and basically looking like an idiot.

“Yes,” Raúl said tiredly. He watched David like somebody would a poisonous snake.

David looked down, then got fed up with that dangling coat-sleeve and yanked his coat completely off. He stuffed his phone into his jeans pocket, tossed the coat over his shoulders and then…forgot what else he’d been about to do. He looked up and Raúl was still watching him. “Oh. Well, have a—I mean, you should—fuck, I mean…”

Something weird happened to Raúl’s face. It went all tense and then his eyes flashed, almost like before he’d thrown the coffee in David’s face. But he didn’t have any coffee. He didn’t move his hands like he did either. He just tilted his head to the side, his jaw tightening up. Then he snorted and gave himself a shake. “David, did you ever get that coffee?”

“No, Guardiola told me to go fuck myself before I could even touch the pot,” David blurted out. Then he tried to grab his face for sounding like an asshole again, only to get his hands all tangled up in his coat. He shook them free as quick as he could and his damn coat started to slip off, and he grabbed that up and just wondered why he hadn’t gotten drunk like everyone else last night.

Raúl was…smiling. Grinning, even. With a bizarre little light in his eyes, like he was going to jump off a cliff or something equally suicidal. “You still want coffee?”

“Honestly, not real—” This time David managed to stop himself. He took a deep breath, looked Raúl in the eye, and opened his mouth. “I mean, I could eat a croissant. And, uh, buy you a cup.”

“Good enough,” Raúl muttered. He turned towards the door. “Come on. I know a place.”

After a disbelieving moment, David hurried after the other man. And got a full frontal of freezing air, and finally got his damn coat on properly. Then he went after Raúl.

* * *

Raúl was sitting in a coffeeshop booth with a steaming cup in his hands and David Villa was sitting across from him and it was peaceful and quiet. Despite that, Raúl couldn’t stop himself from yawning. He knew he needed to keep an eye out because anything up to and including the apocalypse could happen now, but he was just worked out.

“Good croissant,” David mumbled, wiping some crumbs off his lip. He fiddled with the handle of his untouched cup, occasionally glancing up at Raúl. “How’s your coffee?”

“Better than what I’ve been making at home,” Raúl admitted. Another yawn caught up with him and he barely covered it with the back of his hand. Then he rubbed at his right eye and found out how much it was aching, and that reminded him of his cramped-up neck. He pressed the heel of his hand into his neck just below the jaw and peered blearily out at David. “So you’ve been doing well so far, I hear. How’s your line-up shaping up for next season?”

David rumpled his shoulders a few times, ducking his head in between hitches. He tore off a bit of croissant and squished it up between forefinger and thumb. “Okay. I think it’s solid. You feeling any better?”

“I think maybe once I get a decent sleep in an actual bed. It probably wasn’t the best idea to try and help out today, too.” At least Pep had been understanding about all that, and had mostly taken back what he’d given Raúl to do. What was left, Raúl could do from home, whenever he got back there. He didn’t really want to go there, for the same reason he kept coming in early, but he didn’t have to think about that just yet. “So what _did_ I do to you?”

The other man looked blankly at him.

Raúl rolled his shoulders, hoping it’d wake him up a little. It didn’t work, but he wasn’t too upset about it. He was in that detached vague state of exhaustion, where caring just couldn’t reach, and it wasn’t that bad a way to be. “I take it you’ve forgiven me, though? Because you’ve never asked after me before.”

“I—yeah, well.” Villa scratched at the side of his neck and chewed at his lip. “You never did anything to me. You never even…you’ve always been up _here_ , you know.” He cut a line with his hand above both their heads. “Not even close to where I was. I was always looking up.”

Oh, it was that. Actually, Raúl felt a little disappointed. He didn’t cover up this yawn, though he did try to squeeze some awareness into his eyes with the heels of his hands. “David, you’re so talented you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to others. You don’t need to worry—”

“I was always looking up, and I just…really always admired you,” David went on, like Raúl wasn’t talking. He started pushing at the counter with his hand, moving the pressure from the base up to the fingertips and then back. “You and your work. It was great. I mean, it is great. And when I was a kid in school, I was just—kind of dying to get to a place where I could just meet you. Then I got there, and you were…you know, still off up there.”

Raúl sighed and drank coffee. “Well, you’re just about up here with me now, so you can see what it’s really like. It and me. I’m just a man.”

“No, you’re—look, I have a shitty way of saying things to people I really—and you and Mori, it was like some fairytale epic anyway.” David didn’t move except for his eyes, which went from the table to Raúl’s face, but somehow that simple eye-flick was like someone else physically flinging themselves forward. “Fuck. I didn’t mean to bring him up again. I just really fucking like you, okay, and I get really nervous around you and I fuck it up every single fucking time. Like now. Fuck!”

And then David flipped the croissant right over Raúl’s head into the next booth. He didn’t notice, his eyes still stuck right on Raúl even as Raúl belatedly registered the protests behind them. When Raúl turned around, he just glimpsed hurt flickering over David’s face.

“What the hell was that about?” demanded a…a very tall man. Brown hair, large bumpy nose, waving David’s croissant around. “If the food’s that fucking bad, don’t throw it at me, I didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry about that, complete accident,” Raúl said on reflex. He reached out for the croissant. “I hope it didn’t hurt anyo—”

“I wasn’t fucking throwing it at you and it’s a goddamn pastry, not a tire iron, so why don’t you quit it with the drama?” David came storming around the table to snatch the croissant back. Then he stood there and glared up at the man. He stuffed the croissant in his mouth and chewed pointedly.

Raúl opened his mouth. Then he shut it and sat down, and started to massage his temples. “David, sit down. You’re in the wrong here.”

“Oh, like you’ve got any fucking right to say that. You keep your goddamn orders to yourself, okay? I like you, I don’t fucking kiss your ass,” David snapped.

“Zlatan, it’s a _croissant_ , please don’t get us thrown out of a _coffeeshop_ ,” said another man, sighing the way Raúl felt.

Zlatan ignored his companion to smile down at David, showing his teeth like a wolf. “You sound like a little bastard and I don’t even know you. No wonder your friend’s so fed up with you.”

David started his retort and Raúl stood up in between him and Zlatan. It surprised the both of them for long enough to let Raúl shove his way out, and then Raúl dug out his wallet and flipped a couple bills on the counter to cover his share. By then Villa had recovered enough to try and snap at _him_ , but Raúl just shrugged off the man and headed out.

Villa got him on the sidewalk outside of the shop. Raúl yanked himself free and then turned to give the man a real piece of his mind, and saw that Villa didn’t have his coat. He should’ve been too angry to care, frankly, but he was still tired. Little things like that were huge distractions to even piping-hot rage.

“Wait! Wait, I’m sorry, I just do this,” David said, flinging his hands around. One of them flopped into Raúl’s arm by accident, but quick as a snake seized hold of it. “And I didn’t mean that I’ve been sitting around waiting for Mori to dump you either. I didn’t—I don’t fucking want you to suffer, okay? But I just…I like you. I’m fucking this up.”

“Yes. Yes, you are,” Raúl said. For some reason he didn’t leave.

David blinked. He leaned in and looked hard at Raúl, then stood back with hunched shoulders. “I’m…well, look, are you feeling better, anyway?”

Raúl stared at him. David stared back, haggard and pulled in on himself and waiting for the ax to fall. He really meant it. He was going about it in a way that made most romcom disaster flicks look like documentaries and that on top of coming completely out of the blue with it, and anyway the last thing Raúl wanted right now was somebody propositioning him, much less David _Villa_ , but David meant it. And—and Raúl just sighed. 

“I feel like shit,” he said. “I feel like shit, and I miss Fernando and also I’d like to punch him in the head, which is the first time I’ve felt like that in fifteen years of knowing him. So no. Not really.”

“Oh. Sorry,” David said. He awkwardly tugged at Raúl’s arm, then hastily let go when Raúl looked there. “Can I get you another…would you actually let me buy you a coffee?”

“I don’t know, can you do it without insulting me or starting a fight?” Raúl asked.

David jerked up his head, eyes flaring. Then he winced and looked away. He was starting to shiver and he put one arm around himself. “Look, I know I can be a real bastard. But I really just want to…I just want you to stop beating yourself up over it. It wasn’t your fault. It’s his fault.”

“You…don’t really know what happened, you know. So you shouldn’t say things like that.” He wasn’t walking away from this, Raúl slowly realized. He had no idea why but he was already resigning himself to it.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess.” Then David’s head came up and he turned on the intensity to scorching. “But you still shouldn’t feel this shitty. I don’t think I’ve got to know what happened to say that.”

“I—” Raúl started.

Somebody cleared their throat and they both started. Behind David, lounging in the coffeeshop doorway, was Zlatan. He grinned and dangled David’s coat from his hand. “Hate to break up the cute little confession scene, but you forgot this.” He tossed the coat to David. “I was all for letting you freeze, but—ow!”

Zlatan’s companion eased out from behind him, glanced at him rubbing his back, and sighed again. Then the man started off down the street and Zlatan abandoned his mockery to hare after him, complaining about how Sandro was a lot more fun about fucking with strangers.

David snorted, but he put on his coat quick enough. Then he looked at Raúl again and Raúl closed his eyes. That intensity was unnerving. It was too much when Raúl was this tired—probably too much when Raúl wasn’t tired, but at the same time it was…it reminded Raúl that winter was only a season, after all. And Raúl didn’t know if he wanted to know that yet.

“I think I’m going home. I’m falling over,” Raúl said.

Disappointment with David was a full-body reaction, from the eyes to the dropped shoulders to the angry scuff of one foot. Then he mustered up a short breath and an even shorter nod. “Well, probably not a bad idea.”

Raúl half-turned, then stopped. He rubbed his nose. “You can get me that coffee some other time,” he said, and then he left before he could take it back, or David could make him want to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A large portion of this story was inspired by various hilarious photos of these people pulling faces at each other while on national team duty. Those particular iterations of Spain had no poker face whatsoever, and never could keep it together enough to just do it once they'd gotten into the tunnel.
> 
> On the club level, this was inspired by Real Madrid circa 2009-10 and Valencia circa 2006-08.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m not fucking cute. I’m somebody that will rip off your face if you promise me fucking Dutch wonders and then don’t deliver the fucking Dutch wonders,” David snarled, stabbing a pen at the message Silva was waving at him.

The pen went through the paper. David hadn’t meant to do that.

“Uh, yeah, we know.” Silva didn’t seem all that fazed. He just grabbed the pen and handed both it and the scrap of paper to David. “Mata’s already biting that agent’s face off, believe me. But you _are_ cute when you’re freaking out over a date.”

“It’s not a date. We’ve had two coffees and a couple lunch breaks, and now we’re meeting for dinner to talk about the joint project,” David corrected. He grudgingly read the note, then binned it and resumed his email to Figo. “It’s still work. He picked the restaurant because he knows it gets good wireless and we can have a table near some outlets for the laptops. Stop goddamn smirking at me and tell me you’ve figured out the place’s dress code.”

Silva put his hands behind his back, like some kid at show-and-tell, and beamed brightly at him. “Got the dress code, driving instructions and wine suggestions.” He whipped out something and presented it. “The bolded stuff are must-dos, the underlined stuff is things to avoid and the ones in twenty-four point bright red font with boxes around them are things that you need to call in about if they happen.”

David stared at the sheets of paper in Silva’s hands. He saw at least two spreadsheets with color-coded boxes and one pie chart. “Are you saying I don’t give you enough legit work?”

“Aw, Guaje, you know you lost all credibility as an authority figure when we found out you have Raúl’s CD rotation system memorized,” Silva cooed. He dodged David’s kick and lunged forward, stuffing his crazy system into David’s lap. Then he spun away and hopped over David’s desk to grab the ringing phone. “Hey, Sergio. What’s up….oh. Okay. Great timing, I’ll let him know. Yeah, so Raúl’s kind of blanking people left and right, which means he’s a little nervous too. You’ll be doing the same thing.”

Cazorla popped up, yogurt in hand. “Same what?”

“Freaking out?” Silva said, blinking.

“Over dinner? I dunno, I can’t picture Raúl threatening the maitre d’ with gross bodily harm,” Cazorla shrugged. Then he dipped a shoulder towards David. “No offense, man. Also, Van Nistelrooy’s gonna call in about fifteen minutes to apologize for the mix-up. Please don’t threaten him with gross bodily harm either, he’s one of the nicer ones.”

“That was _once_ and don’t tell me either of you two feel sorry for Marchena. Gross bodily harm is to him like a hello to anyone else.” David finally got Silva’s many-colored sheets out of his lap and onto his desk, and then piled a couple folders on top for good measure. “Why the hell do I keep you smartasses around?”

Silva fiddled with David’s phone. “’cause…we’re even shorter and make you look good despite your psychotic tendencies?”

“ _Neurotic_ ,” Mata called on his way through the room.

David slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Out.”

“’kay!” the three of them chorused. Their feet headed away from David. It was nice.

Wait. “Silva!”

“Oh, yeah, we’re all busy but Joaquín’s got fifteen minutes after lunch and he’ll go home to get you a change of shirt then.”

David opened his eyes and yanked himself half out of his seat. “You gave _Joaquín_ the keys to my place?”

Silva and co. were already gone. Disgusted, David pulled his chair back under him and started flipping through the folders. He stopped when he uncovered a piechart, then shoved that folder back. Then he thought about it. He looked around, then pulled out the piechart.

* * *

The food had been very nice, at least. They had gotten through just about all the work Raúl had wanted to get through, and no one had come over demanding to know why David was tossing around silverware like in the nightmare Raúl had had during his afternoon nap. It was still weird.

“Shit. Er.” David glanced under the table, then popped up like his seat was on fire and hustled off along the wall. “I got a phone call.”

He did have his phone in his hand, but the screen wasn’t lit. And it hadn’t pinged or buzzed, and it was quiet enough in the restaurant so that Raúl should’ve heard that, but Raúl just nodded. Then he watched David run out the doors. They swung a little in David’s wake and Raúl sighed. He pushed two fingers against his temple before shrugging and dragging his laptop towards him. He put one hand on it and his own mobile went off.

After a moment, Raúl took it out and looked at the screen. He’d told all his staff only to forward emergencies to him and barring something completely bizarre—like him agreeing to have dinner with David Villa—nothing remotely close should’ve come up. And it wasn’t a staff number anyway. It was one that Raúl knew; he twisted the phone around in his hand, then bit down and answered the damn call. “Pepe?”

*Hey, Raúl. How are things? Your date start any shit with the waiter yet?*

Raúl sank in his chair. “I could have sworn that I told Iker to kill anyone who told you—”

*Yeah, you did, so I was told. But since when does that stop your crew from passing along the gossip? I’m sure they only meant well, though.* Pepe laughed, deep and cheerful. Then he cleared his throat and tapped something. *But seriously, I’m making sure none of that crap gets back to him.*

“Oh. Oh, well…thank you.” It was a good idea. It was what Raúl would’ve asked if he’d thought about it, he supposed. He scratched at the tablecloth.

*Mostly because I think he’ll be a moron about it and you don’t deserve to have that on top of…well, whatever’s going on over there. He’s okay, by the way. How are you?* The pause Pepe left for an answer was more of an afterthought than anything else. *Look, I might be more friends with him than with you, but I figured somebody needed to call and tell you not to be guilty about moving on. You get to be happy like everyone else.*

Raúl exhaled sharply. He dug his nails into the cloth, then made himself relax. Then he took another deep breath.

*You are, right? Because never mind how you broke it off and why it happened, it’s all over now. Which is a pile of shit, I know, but you can live with that shit or you can have a clean, non-stinking house,* Pepe went on.

After a second, Raúl laughed disbelievingly. He stopped himself and drank some water, and then chuckled. “All right. Thank you. Although my nice clean house just has me in it right now, since David ran off a moment ago after blurting out something about the French being nothing but poseurs in bed.”

*Well, he’s right. You’ve seen a French movie sex scene, haven’t you?* Pepe snorted.

Raúl laughed again, and hard enough so that he had to put down his water. He leaned back and glanced in the direction of the door, absently answering Pepe’s next question. The faintest outline of spiky hair was visible in the corner and Raúl smiled.

* * *

Of all the… David nearly threw his mobile into the stack of trash on the corner out of sheer frustration. Instead he jammed it into his pocket and spun around. He was going to kick the wall but somebody was standing between it and him.

“Whoa! Okay, you’ve gotta be Villa,” said the man. His eyes were wide and his hands were palms-up, but he just kept getting into David’s space. “Okay, so is it number fifteen or um, twenty-seven and you know, doesn’t really matter. It was stupid, you fucked up, go back in and apologize.”

David stared at him. “I’m David Villa but who the hell are you?”

“Cesc! Hi!” Cesc stuck out his hand. He let it hang there for a moment, then took it back with a bit of an offended air. “Yeah, they were right about that. Anyway, quick breakdown: I’m a friend of Silva’s, he got called off on an Albiol emergency, Santi and Juanma aren’t on call yet, I’m standing in. But don’t worry! They filled me in and I know the color-codes and everything. So get back in and say sorry!”

After a second, David managed to make his mouth work. “On…call?”

“And man, do you need that,” Cesc muttered. He looked David over, then suddenly spun around David.

By the time David had turned around to face the other man, Cesc had gotten his hands on David and was vigorously shoving him back up the stairs. “In! In! Say sorry, um, tell him he has nice eyes, and don’t forget the goodnight kiss later, okay? Okay! Good luck!”

And then David was through the doors and the maitre d’ was giving him the stink-eye, and David had no choice but to brush down his clothes and make his way back to the table. He found Raúl just hanging up on a call and smiling broadly at something, and a little twinge went off in David’s chest. Also, Raúl looked much better when he was grinning than when he was looking like somebody had just…well…thrown him over for some Marseille action after ten damn good years together. Fuck. David needed to stop that; that was number one on the twenty-four point font red…fuck.

“Oh, you’re back,” Raúl said, looking up. His smile faded a little.

“I’m sorry I keep fucking this up,” David said.

Raúl frowned. Then his brows went up and he nodded. “Oh, that.”

“I just—” David started.

“I’m fine. Really. I’m really fine about it, David.” Then Raúl picked up his fork and prodded at the remains of his entrée. He speared an asparagus stalk and glanced at David. “Do you want to sit down?”

“I just think what he did was a shitty thing and I can’t even begin to get it,” David’s mouth rambled on. “I mean, what the hell does Marseille have over you? Shit. Forget I said that.”

At first it seemed like Raúl was fine with that plan: he nodded tightly and looked at his plate. But then he sighed and put down his fork, and looked up in time to make David freeze awkwardly halfway into his chair. “It wasn’t completely unexpected. We’d been having problems.”

David…had never actually thought they’d talk about it, in all of the zillion scenarios that he’d run through his head. He didn’t know what to say and he knew he looked like an idiot because of it. He rumbled his throat a few times and then sat down.

“He wanted…he thought what we had was settling, I thought it was perfect,” Raúl muttered, looking away. His fingers rippled along the edge of the table before abruptly sliding off. Then he looked back at David, dead in the eye. “It was bad, but I just thought we could work through it like we’d always had. And we didn’t. And I suppose that that means I was wrong. I can live with that—people are wrong about things, and I never thought I’d be right all the time. I just thought I’d do the best I can. And I did.”

“I don’t know why he’d think being with you would be settling,” David finally said. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s funny, but I used to…we had lunch together sometimes, you know. When we ran into each other in the cafeteria. I liked him, even if he had you. He seemed like a nice guy.”

Raúl grinned lopsidedly. “Fernando is a nice man. The nicest man I think I’ve ever met, even when he’s breaking my heart.” He was still grinning, but his eyes were beginning to hurt to look at. “You’re nothing like that.”

David couldn’t help it, he bristled up. He tried to roll it off his shoulders, but he was concentrating on the wrong body part. “Yeah, I know I’m a fucking bastard, all right? Not all of us can skate through life on charm alone. Some of us have to work at it.”

“David—”

“Oh, goddamn it,” David exhaled, throwing himself back in his chair. He stared at the ceiling, then rubbed his hand over his face. “I’m not trying to be Mori for you. I couldn’t do that if the fucking world depended on it. I can’t even—I can’t even be nice to you twice in a row. But I don’t want fucking France, I want you. I want to be with you. And—and that’s all I’ve got.”

“David,” Raúl said again, more quietly. He wasn’t smiling anymore, but he was looking at David and the way he was doing it, he was making David clench up inside. “David, I never said that it was a bad thing. You’re…you’re different, obviously. But I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”

And once again David was at a loss for words. He half-heartedly did a mental flip through Silva’s charts and spreadsheets, only to stop when he realized that they didn’t address this one at all. So he just sort of stared at Raúl.

After a moment Raúl ducked his head and scratched the back of it. He snorted lightly and put out his hand, closing his laptop. “I think we’ve done enough for now. And I’m sorry, but I have to run. I got a call from Figo—Cristiano’s out wreaking havoc again. But I already paid the bill so take as long as you want.”

Then Raúl started packing up in earnest and David just nodded. He sat there for a couple minutes before he pulled it together enough to at least hand Raúl a folder. Then he gave himself a sharp shake and grabbed the man’s arm. “Are you ever going to let me get the tab?”

Raúl looked down at David’s fingers on his wrist, then looked up. “Maybe next time.”

“At this rate I’ll have to buy you a fucking opera to break even,” David said. God knew why he thought of opera right then.

“I like opera,” Raúl said, still looking at David. He was half-bent over the table, his other hand on his bag on the chair, his face close-ish to David’s face. Maybe a little closer now.

And then he leaned back, and pulled away his hand. He zipped up his bag and David breathed out. “You like opera?” he mumbled. “Okay. We can do opera.”

* * *

“Here.” Iker dropped a flashdrive on the desk by Raúl. “My findings.”

Raúl looked at it, then opened his mouth. Then he inhaled sharply and went back to doing up his tie.

“It’s an eighty-seven slide Powerpoint presentation with another fifty pages of annotations and references, but basically there’s not a timeline for this kind of thing and it doesn’t matter anyway since Pep promised that his new Swedish guy will eat anybody who calls you a slut for moving on too quick,” Iker added. He took a gulp of a breath, then frowned at Raúl. “You got a shave. I mean, a professional one.”

“Luís booked it instead of that screening meeting I was supposed to have. Who told Luís?” Then Raúl turned around and took a look at himself in the mirror. He stretched his arms out in front of himself and gave them a little shake. The right amount of cuff still stuck out and the cufflinks didn’t fall out. He groaned and put his hand over his face. “I’m overdressed.”

Iker hummed. “…it’s the opera? And tradition technically says you should be in a tux?”

“David’s going to show up in jeans and be insecure about the mistake and I’ll have to spend the whole evening trying to figure out he actually just wanted to say hello when he called me a pretentious conservative suck-up,” Raúl muttered. “It’s going to be painful and I _agreed_ to it. He hasn’t been to an opera in his whole life.”

“Nobody told Luís. He just _knows_.” More humming. Then Iker made a defensive gesture towards the look Raúl gave him. “I know I’m behind here but I’m tired and not Pep or Luís, all right? Give me a mom—why did Villa ask you to an opera anyway? Let alone this one? I mean, I could sort of understand if he’d asked you to one of those funky post-modern ones, but…sorry, this isn’t helping.”

Raúl didn’t answer. He just pulled at his hair. If he jumped in his car right now and called David to switch their meeting to the opera house, he could change just in time for the opening curtain. But that left the entire rest of the opera.

“Although it is your favorite,” Iker remarked. He scruffed at his hair. “Okay, I’m having problems figuring out why you’re just now figuring out that going anywhere with Villa requires a full-scale battle plan complete with hyperspace deflector shields.”

“Been watching Star Wars again?” Raúl muttered, pushing his hair back in place. It was too late to reschedule. At least they weren’t getting anything to eat beforehand; he felt a little ill.

“Believe it or not, Mata’s never seen it. And if I’d left it up to his friends, they would’ve started with _Phantom Menace_ and completely ruined it for him.” Iker shuddered, then made an embarrassed shrug when Raúl glanced at him. “Look, this is just a blind guess but I think you said yes because you think it won’t be _that_ bad of a disaster, and it probably won’t because Villa actually…really kinda seems to…want to do this. I mean, he’s going to an _opera_.”

Raúl picked up his work mobile. He weighed it in his hand, then took a deep breath and gave it to Iker. “Silva at least should’ve given David a heads-up about what an opera is, right?”

“His Powerpoint was even longer than mine,” Iker said, faintly awestruck.

“And Pep said…”

“Swedish guy will eat the haters, to quote Piqué,” Iker replied. He cottoned onto the puzzled look on Raúl’s face and waved his hand way over his head. “Zlatan? New hotshot director? Really tall? Comes with two Italian producers, one nice and one bitchy?”

Raúl ahhed, remembering now. That had been an awful introduction, given how he’d met Zlatan pre-introduction and David. He twitched his tie again. “I’m actually going to do this.”

There was a knock at the door. They both turned to it and the door slowly creaked open to about halfway. It stopped there, and after another moment, David slowly pushed his head past it. He blinked when he saw Iker, and blinked again at Raúl. “So…are we going yet or not? I’d like to get there before my suit strangles me.”

Iker groaned and grabbed his face. David grimaced and almost grabbed his face, but just in time realized he had what looked like…like a bouquet of flowers in his hand. Raúl couldn’t help it: he laughed.

“Okay, we’re going,” he said.

* * *

David had never gone to an opera before because he’d had a pretty good suspicion that he wouldn’t like it, and he was right. He sank lower in his seat.

At least they had a good view, he thought, staring at Raúl. The other man was sitting on the edge of his seat, absolutely transfixed by whatever caterwauling was going on below. He had his chin resting on his clasped hands, his elbows stuck into his knees, and he hadn’t moved from that pose for about ten minutes. It was dark enough for David to see the light from the stage catching in Raúl’s eyes and making them shine.

The applause caught David by surprise and made him start up. He banged his elbow into the seat back and his foot on the floor, and promptly doubled over cursing. Then he swallowed hard and shut up, and straightened up just in time for Raúl to finish his odd look. And for the people in the seats in front of them to sniff pointedly as they turned back around.

“It’s intermission,” Raúl said. “Are you…are you all right?”

“Fine. I’m fine, too. I’m just great.” David pried himself out of his seat and let the person on his other side pass, then stood up. He hissed as cramps unfolded in his thighs. “You fine?”

Raúl started to answer, then bit his lip. He looked away, at the stage, and it was so wistful that David wanted to punch something. Then he muttered something about getting a drink and got out into the aisle.

A bunch of overdressed, high-pitched-laughing people got in the way so it took till the lobby for David to catch up with Raúl. He wriggled free of the crowd with a gasp and a limp—the opera crowd was a lot less shy about wielding stilettos than any club David had been to—and hopped up to find Raúl sliding behind a corner with his mobile. David jumped in there too and grabbed Raúl’s phone-arm, yanking it down. “Look, if I’m making it that bad for you, I can just go.”

“But…it was your idea to come here,” Raúl said. He flipped shut his phone with a flicker of a guilty glance towards it. “And your tickets. And David, it’s not that you’re making it bad for me, it’s that you obviously hate this so I don’t know why you’d do it.”

“Because you love it and I want you to have a good time with me for once, why else?” David snapped, exasperated.

Raúl raised his brows. He put his phone away without looking, then rubbed at his forehead. “David, it’s hard to have a good time with you when you’re…well…miserable.”

“I—all right, fine, then what should I be doing? I’m trying, you know? Your favorite opera, flowers, a fucking suit, what? It’s right out of all the shit you like so I don’t know, if you don’t like it anymore…” David flung himself into the wall, exhaling. Then he hissed and grabbed his elbow. He massaged it and stared at the floor.

“How do you know I like this?” Raúl asked.

“Well, you always did it with Mori,” David muttered. Then he groaned and hit his head against the wall. On purpose. “Fuck.”

He heard a sigh and then a mutter. Then Raúl moved into David’s field of vision, face stony. He leaned in to peer at David and David straightened up, confused, and that was when Raúl grabbed David by the shoulder. “David, you told me you weren’t Fernando and you didn’t want to be Fernando. So why—listen, I don’t want a do-over with him, I want to do something with you that you’d do. All right?”

“All right. Yeah, all right.” David yanked Raúl forward by the shirt.

They weren’t quite lined up and Raúl’s chin banged into David’s cheek. Raúl grunted and put one hand on David’s chest. He pushed himself back a bit and David grabbed the man’s head and kissed him hard. They swayed backward and then to the left as Raúl stumbled; he patted at David’s side and then put his arm around David’s back, and David kept them turning till Raúl ran up against something. Then he pushed Raúl into it, still kissing him, getting kissed back and damn good about it.

Raúl fisted his hand in the back of David’s suit-jacket, pulling it so taut that it started to force David’s arms back. David tried to shake it off, then just moved his hands down to press against Raúl’s chest. He tilted his head for a different angle on the kiss and his leg slid between Raúl’s knees, getting them right up against each other. Raúl grunted, hitched himself and dragged his hand slowly through David’s hair. He yanked out a few strands as David reluctantly pulled himself back, breathing hard.

“So.” David breathed in again for more air. “I like the suit on you, anyway.”

“I like _Carmen_ , but I’m not that thrilled with this production,” Raúl said, voice unsteady, eyes unwavering on David. “You’re supposed to give a damn when Don José dies at the end but I can’t wait with this one.”

“Wait, somebody dies in this?” David said.

Raúl looked at him, absently curling fingers against David’s nape in a really distracting way. “You want to stay, then?”

“No, I want to go home and take off your suit. I don’t like it that much.” David breathed. “I want to get to the parking lot at least, anyway.”

The fingers on David’s neck clamped down hard and the world went fuzzy, but not so fuzzy that David didn’t see the way Raúl’s pupils tried to swallow him up. He breathed again, ragged, and yanked at that damn good-looking, damn annoying suit the other man was wearing.

They got to the parking lot and David tried to get his car keys out, and Raúl pinned David’s hips up against the car and ran his mouth from the bottom of David’s neck all the way to David’s mouth. The car keys dropped from David’s shaking fingers; David steadied his hands against Raúl’s sides, then started pulling at Raúl’s shirt. When he ran out of shirt, he shoved his fingers up against Raúl’s skin, hot like a furnace compared to the chilly air. He sucked his way off Raúl’s bottom lip, glanced at hazy eyes and buried his face in Raúl’s neck, his hands in Raúl’s trousers.

“We should—should get _in_ the car,” Raúl muttered. He was pushing himself up against David, hips first, short hard strokes with the part of his body between his waist and knees. He rocked his prick into David’s hand so his trousers suddenly twisted up around David’s arm, trapping it in place on Raúl’s prick while Raúl mouthed _hard_ at David’s jaw. “I don’t want—public indecency charge.”

“Yes, you do.” David shook his hand free, sort of, as free as it was getting while it was in Raúl’s trousers. His fingers skimmed over sweaty silk and he swiped his tongue across Raúl’s upper lip, then grabbed the back of Raúl’s head as the other man came after him. “You fucking do, you fucking try and call yourself out of a date with me, you want a fuck right-- _up_ \--against this fucking—”

Raúl suddenly ducked down and bit into David’s shoulder, getting spit right through to the skin. He shoved his cock against the back of David’s hand, grinding up against David against the car, hissing because he was trying not to moan. “Wasn’t calling out, I was trying to see if—if your assist—if they were coaching you through this one too—”

“What? What do you—you knew—no, fuck _no_ , they’re keeping their fucking noses out of this one,” David snapped, jerking his head back. “I didn’t want this to be a production, I want it to be a fucking _date_. I want to date you, not to fuck with your head.”

“David, you’re a fuck in the head just by breathing,” Raúl said, laughing, slack against David. He was smiling and his eyes were dancing and he looked weird. He’d never looked like that around David before.

And then he leaned down and kissed David, hands on David’s hips, pushing his whole body into it, and David reached up and managed to claw Raúl’s suit-jacket right off his shoulders in one go. The other man rolled with it, shrugged the jacket down further while his mouth sucked at David’s chin, throat, and then he was chewing off David’s tie. Or something. He got the knot undone and his hands were still clutching David’s hips and they were seriously making the car rock. David could hear it creaking away behind them, could feel the door-handle digging into his ass and suddenly it was pissing him off. He reached behind him and twisted it, remembered about the keys and growled irritably into Raúl’s mouth.

Raúl shivered, then made some low throaty noise himself and licked down into David’s collar. David jumped and dragged his fingers along Raúl’s prick and Raúl jerked hard against him, and right, keys. Fucking keys.

He had to push Raúl back to get them, and he did that like there was a countdown to the end of the world riding on it. Even so, by the time he got back up, Raúl was staring at him with the lust hazing into confused irritation, standing lopsided with his nice suit all wrenched awry, hair ruffling in a slight breeze. David nearly dropped the keys again grabbing Raúl back. It made it a hell of a lot harder to open the door but Raúl’s hands were all over the place, David’s back and arms and ass, and they were flat-out tonguing, forget kissing, and all that mattered was that David eventually got the door open.

They both fell into it, Raúl slightly before David, and David had a moment of panic before Raúl hooked his fingers through David’s belt-loops and hauled him in after. If the man could do that, he hadn’t concussed himself on the gear-shift and oh, they were in the backseat. Fine. Less shit to get in the way of David crawling up Raúl, shoving aside clothes as he went, till he had his hands on warm thighs and his tongue in a warmer mouth. Raúl’s hands were messing around David’s fly and then something ripped as David arched up to follow Raúl’s back-dropping head, drinking in the man’s moan. Chilly air rippled up into David’s trousers; he sucked harder at Raúl’s mouth and shook his hips to get rid of it. 

His trousers rumpled down and got in the way, and he had to give up a hand to push them out of the way. Somehow his fingers got tangled up with Raúl’s doing that, and then Raúl was shoving both their hands against a nice handful of prick. And it was cold with the air blowing in the door and friction burns and they probably needed something and they didn’t even bother. Raúl was twisting around under David but with his knees up, one leg even hooking over David’s back, and David squirmed around till they had his cock, both cocks rubbing past each other in their shared grip, and they did it like fucking teenagers. Cramped and crazy, in their formal opera wear, till first Raúl and then David gasped and bucked and went slack.

They didn’t really fit on the back-seat. That cold air turned their sweat clammy real fast, now that they weren’t moving. Raúl lifted his head and his hair was a mess, curls standing cock-eyed above a matted whorl plastered to the left side of his brow. He laughed a little incredulously. “I have never had sex in a back-seat before.”

“What?” David shifted over so he could rest more on the seat, and stare at Raúl without having to prop himself up. “What, were you just born stuffy and grown-up? You never, even wi—”

Raúl tensed.

“—never fucking mind, you have now,” David corrected. He watched Raúl relax. His hand felt gross, he slowly realized, and he wiped it against his leg before remembering that this was yeah, his best suit and oh, well, there’d been that rip too. “Well, so that’s my kind of date.”

“Screwing in the backseat?” Raúl asked, brows arching. He glanced at the open door, then twisted his leg free. He got his foot hooked into the door handle and pulled the door shut. “It’s not bad, I suppose.”

David snorted and Raúl turned back, and David got hold of _something_ of Raúl’s and held him still to kiss him again. When David backed off, Raúl was breathing heavy again.

“Fuck you, it’s better than the opera,” David said reflexively. He ran his hand along whatever part of Raúl he had, and Raúl bowed into it in a way that really shouldn’t…well, it looked fucking good. David kissed Raúl again, then grudgingly scooted himself up against the door by their heads. “You want a bed, I can do that too. Just give me a moment.”

“A bed?” Raúl rolled back into a shadow, so David couldn’t really make out his expression.

“Maybe breakfast tomorrow.” Then David exhaled hard and banged his head against the front seat. “Look, I’m no fucking one-night-stand. I’m no stand-in. I’m just some nutcase who wants to see you laugh like that again.”

It was quiet, with Raúl in that shadow. Then Raúl got out of it, sticking his arm forward and then pulling his head after. He slipped on something and David had to grab his elbow, and instead of straightening up, Raúl looked at David from there, half-leaning over David with his nose right in David’s face.

“I like pomegranate juice in the morning,” he said.

“Okay.” David digested that. “I don’t know if I have that in the fridge, but maybe next time.”

“All right.” Then Raúl frowned. He shook his head and put his hand on David’s leg. “Well, no, not all right. No maybes. Next time you have some, or we’ll have to have breakfast at my place.”

David snorted. “We have to? What the fuck—”

Raúl laughed at him. Outright curling onto David now, hair in his eyes, laughing. He laid his head on David’s shoulder, then lifted it up and petted David’s cheek. His fingers kept running around the corner of David’s mouth in a weird curvy way, till David realized they were just following the smile on his face. And then Raúl kissed him.

* * *

Raúl leaned in the doorway to David’s place and scratched his temple, then the side of his face. He put out his foot and nudged the bottle of pomegranate juice on the doormat. Then he took his foot back in and looked carefully up and down the hall.

“What are you doing?” David came wandering up in a pair of loose ratty sweat-pants. He stopped by Raúl’s side, looked out and frowned. “What’s that?”

After another moment, Raúl bent down. Then he straightened up and grabbed at the bedsheet before it could slide completely off his hips. He really should have gotten his shirt or his pants, or some actual article of clothing…but he honestly couldn’t remember where they’d went and it still felt a little odd to be taking David’s clothes.

Before Raúl could try again, David stepped out and grabbed the bottle. He stood up with it and turned it in his hand, then popped off the top and smelled it. Then he shoved the bottle into Raúl’s chest and stormed out into the hall. “Silva! Mata! Whichever fucking one of you’s on fucking call! You little—”

“Eeep!” A large houseplant twenty meters down the hall suddenly sprouted legs and took off for the elevator.

David ran after it. Raúl watched till the other man got to the elevator, then got the morning paper as well and went back into the apartment. He put the paper on the kitchen table and found a glass, then poured himself some juice. Then he pulled out a chair. He paused, turned around and went to the phone in the corner.

Ten minutes later David came back, panting and looking harried. He was cursing up a storm about Mata, but stopped when he saw Raúl. Then he slouched against the fridge, crossing his arms over his chest. “Well, sorry, but I guess it’s going to be all over the office.”

“Mmm.” Raúl sipped some more pomegranate juice. He turned to a new section of the paper.

After a moment, David pushed himself off the fridge and came up to the other side of the table. He pulled out a chair and sat down with his hands flat against the table-top. “You seem all right about it.”

“I think it already has been for a few months, and anyway I’m not going in to work today,” Raúl said. The pomegranate juice was top-notch, his favorite brand. He was going to have to start getting to know David’s people, obviously.

“It’s not your off-day,” David said.

Raúl blinked and looked up at the other man. Then he shrugged it off and drank more juice. “No, but it would’ve been slow anyway. So I called in and I’ll do some work from home this afternoon, I suppose. You said something about breakfast?”

David blinked and worked his mouth a few times. Then he got up. He went over to the counter and looked at it, crossed the room and looked in the fridge, and finally came back to stand by Raúl. “Uh, yeah,” he said, scruffing his head. “Listen, so…”

Before he could finish, Raúl put down his glass and twisted around to grab a handful of David’s sweat-pants. He pulled David forward and looked up at the other man. “David, I had a really wonderful time, one that I don’t care about the whole office knowing because I want to do it again, maybe even on the table. But first I’d really like to eat something.”

“On the…” A brilliant, smug smile broke out on David’s face. “I _knew_ it was better than the opera.”

Raúl rolled his eyes and David grabbed his face and kissed him soundly. Then the other man strode over to the fridge with real purpose in his step. Content, Raúl picked up his juice and reached for the paper. Then he stopped. He’d been kidding about on the table, but…he looked at David padding around the kitchen shirtless, grinning like a fool. Then he downed his juice and stood up.

* * *

Looking wounded, Marchena backed out of the office. David rolled his head, not believing a bit of it, and spun his chair around. He tapped a few times at his laptop, then sighed and looked over. “What?”

Silva and Cazorla fiddled ostentatiously with their files, not meeting his eyes. Eventually Silva nodded. “Um, well, you didn’t try to dunk Marchena’s head into the trashcan. Or even really threaten him. I mean, that was…that was almost tactful.”

“Yeah, well, I just don’t need the hassle right now,” David muttered, turning back to his laptop. “We’ve got the Portuguese thing to get off the ground and I don’t want to call Mourinho more than I have to, and I want to be out of here by seven tonight. I’ve got a thing this evening.”

“ _Ooooh_ ,” Cazorla said. The room seemed to brighten with the metaphorical dawn coming on over his head. “Raúl’s wrapping up early too. Okay, no prob, we’ll send Deco to run around the warehouses or something.”

David looked back at them and found them both scribbling away in their folders. Not that that hid the smug smiles much. He opened his mouth, then just shook his head and got up. Silva started to call after him but David waved off the other man. “No, just text if there’s an update. I’m going upstairs—” cue snickering that David manfully ignored “—to see if I can catch Iker about those changes to the Dutch project.”

In all honesty, David wasn’t even thinking about the Dutch project a second after he was out the door, and he didn’t care that much if everyone knew it. His life was pretty good and he liked it that way, and a couple sniggers weren’t going to ruin it for him. Let those bastards talk.

Speaking of which, he got out of the elevator and Albiol tried to get all up in his face about something. He dodged out of the way, determined not to get dragged into some last-minute disaster, and Albiol grabbed his arm. The other man actually yanked him over a good meter. “Villa, _listen_ to me, you don’t want to go in there right now.”

“What, Figo laying some crap on him again? Why doesn’t the bastard ever bug Guardiola with that shit?” David said, shouldering Albiol off.

Before the other man could get him again, he grabbed the knob to Raúl’s office, turned it and swung himself into the room. He let his free hand fly out to catch the jamb and jerked himself so he ended up with his back against the opposite side of the doorway.

“Weren’t you just down here with a steaming pile of—” David said, and then he saw who was with Raúl.

After a moment, Raúl closed his eyes and tilted his head slightly back, like he was praying. Beside him Fernando Morientes straightened up and smiled apologetically. “David. Sorry, but we’re in the middle of something. Can you come back later?”

“I—like _hell_ ,” David snapped. He worked his mouth around a few times, then shook his head. Then he pushed himself off the jamb, slapping the wood as he went. “When the fuck did you come back?”

Morientes’ brow creased as he frowned. He took a little breath, then cocked his head with a fucking little side-glance to Raúl, all conspiratorial and smooth and careful. The way he came around the desk, the slant of his shoulders and the easy swing of his arms, it was pure charm and patience. “Just this morning. I…guess you must be surprised. Everyone’s been so far. But I’m not here to cause a problem or anything. I just wanted to see Raúl.”

David punched him.

* * *

Fernando stared at the bloody towel, then exhaled sharply and crumpled it up in his hand. He hunched over his knees so his head was almost lower than the top of the couch. “Pepe never mentioned you’d…started…” he grimaced and threw back his head, eyes wide and incredulous “…David _Villa_? I’m sorry, but doesn’t he hate you? He has rabid fits whenever your name comes up.”

“I don’t know about that, but we manage to talk without much foaming at the mouth,” Raúl said acidly. Then he winced and turned away. He leaned against the wall and rubbed at the side of his face, breathing slowly in and out. “Look, never mind him. Fer—Mori, what are you doing here?”

“Never mind him? He’s fucking you and never mind?” Fernando said, voice rising sharply.

Raúl turned back and the other man was halfway off the couch, though he stopped when Raúl flinched. Fernando pressed his lips together and looked down at the floor. Then he shook himself all over, like a man just coming up out of the water for breath. He sat back down and hung his hands between his knees. After a moment he put up his right hand and pressed it against his swollen lip.

“Did you tell Pepe you were coming?” Raúl finally asked.

“No.” Fernando dragged his hand across his mouth. He seemed too angry to even notice that that made his lip bleed again. Then he tipped his chin so he could look up at Raúl. “He knows? Even he knows?”

“I—Fernando, you walked out on me. You walked out and you bought your one-way ticket to Marseille, and you _left_ me. You left me!” Raúl’s voice was rising now. He didn’t really give a damn. He banged something when he yanked himself off the wall and it wasn’t enough and he had to walk over to kick his desk, too. “So sorry, didn’t know I was supposed to keep telling you what I was doing. It didn’t seem like you were interested any more.”

“Well, I am!” Fernando stared at Raúl, eyes blazing, mouth bloody. His shoulders flexed like he was going to leap off the couch.

Raúl snorted. He was picking up things from David, he vaguely realized.

The snort hit Fernando like a slap; the other man actually turned his head away. Then he hissed between his teeth, slowly lowering his head back into his hand. He rubbed at his eyes and the side of his nose, and then let out a long, low breath. “I…you’re right. I don’t have the right. I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have…”

Walk out the door, Raúl thought to himself. He didn’t need this. He was fine with how things had been this morning, when Fernando hadn’t been sitting on his couch and making him clench his fists, making him stare at the little curl of hair at Fernando’s nape. He needed to walk out. He had the right to do it.

“…it’s just that I was wrong and I missed you. I missed you a lot,” Fernando said quietly. He looked up at Raúl again. He wasn’t angry now. His eyes were dark and sad and raw, and his hands hung limply over his knees. “So I came back. I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to see me, but I had to—you have to know I still love you.”

Raúl put out a hand behind him. He didn’t touch anything, and then he found his desk. He slumped hard against it.

* * *

“I just thought a little mood music,” Mata said, wounded.

David looked at him, then twisted sharply away and flung the iPod towards the far wall. A hand intercepted it and David couldn’t help glaring at its owner as he turned away again. He saw a chair, flopped in it and then threw back his head. He stared at the ceiling.

“Anyway, the _Cake_ version? Are you kidding?” Silva said, fiddling with the iPod.

Mata started to answer and David screamed. Everybody shut up for a moment.

The phone rang. Silva shoved the iPod into Joaquín’s face, elbowed off Cazorla and dove on the phone. He fumbled it up to his ear and listened for a few seconds. “Okay. Okay, Mori is leaving the office. He’s leaving…no, shit, he’s standing in the doorway—Iker! Throw something at him! I don’t know, a stapler or whatever!”

Albelda shoved his arm under Silva. He cursed up a storm at the biting but managed to pry the phone away. “Are you all crazy? Listen, Iker, ignore all of that. For God’s sake, we already had one assault today. Violence is not the way, people.”

Everyone looked at him. Albelda maddogged them right back, then slammed down the phone.

“Where’s that Swedish guy when you need somebody eaten?” moaned Cazorla.

David exhaled irritably and slapped his hands down on the chair’s arms. He pushed himself out of the chair and got one step towards the door. Then he had concerned eyes and a big binder blocking his way. “Move. I’m—”

“Going up to remind Raúl that Mori’s an asshole and you’re way better?” Mata said hopefully.

“No,” David said.

Mata dropped the binder on David’s foot. It weighed a ton and then Mata didn’t get out of the way when David doubled over, so David ended up on the floor with a hurting back and foot. He did manage to roll out of the way before Mata could grab his ankle, and then he got up onto his knees.

“No? What do you mean, no?” Mata was screeching. “That jerk ran off and Raúl was totally fair game! And he likes you, he likes you enough to get past your weird inability to be nice to him, he had sex with you in the back of—”

“We weren’t there, idiot!” Silva hissed.

“—he actually smiles now and he waits for you in the lobby in the morning!” Mata finished without skipping a beat. “You can’t just give up on him like that!”

David rubbed at his back, then got hold of a knee. He gingerly rolled onto his feet and straightened up till he was just bent over at the waist instead of prostrate. “I’m not giving up on him.”

“Oh.” Mata blinked. “Oh, okay. Sorry, I thought your insecurity issues were coming up again.”

“What insecurity issues?” David muttered, then grimaced. “Never mind, don’t even think of answering that, just get out of the way.”

Cazorla dropped into David’s view upside-down. Then he went right side up as he slid off the desk. “So…what _are_ you going to do?”

David opened his mouth and Silva made expansive ‘no way in hell’ gestures. “You can’t kill Mori. Nu-uh. It’s no good if you end up in jail.”

“I’m not going to kill him,” David sighed. He straightened up all the way and his back told him it needed a couple more minutes. He pushed a fist into it and told it it had one. “I already punched him and just leave it all the hell alone for once, would you? I need to go up there and talk to Raúl. By my _self_.”

“Okay. No problem.” Silva looked around the room and got answering nods from the others. He came over and helped steady David by the arm. His feet shuffled on the floor. “So I have to say, I never saw this scenario coming, but I did research some other—”

David rolled his eyes and pulled away. “I don’t want to know. I’m just—I’m going now. Okay? Great, see you.”

The elevator was nearly there before David realized he didn’t even know if Morientes was gone. He chewed on his lip and dug the knuckles of his fist into the side of his leg. He probably should’ve asked. Punching the man probably wasn’t the best reaction but he wasn’t sure if he wouldn’t do it again, should Morientes be standing there when the doors opened.

Morientes wasn’t. Iker was and he was yanking at his hair till he saw David. Then he dropped his hand and bit his lip.

“He still in?” David asked. He couldn’t stand still and kept shifting from foot to foot. He wanted to punch something again.

“Yeah, in his office.” For a moment Iker acted like there was more to say, but then he just got out of the way.

David almost didn’t want to go, stupid as that was. Well, he was stupid. He grimaced and put back his shoulders and went to the goddamn office. Then he opened the goddamn door and looked in.

Raúl was sitting on his couch, one hand propped up on the arm. He had his face in his hand but he took it out as David came inside. He breathed in sharply and David clenched his fist around the door-knob. Then he made himself take his hand off that and fucking face the other man.

“David,” Raúl said. “I—”

“I’m going to love you—no, that’s fucking stupid. I mean, that sounds stupid, not that it is stupid, because—goddamn it.” David grabbed his face and dug his nails into his nose. Maybe it’d help him concentrate. Maybe it’d just make him sound sillier. He yanked his hand off. “I love you, okay? I’ve been in love with you for a long time, it’s just that I’m a fucking moron about talking about it. And I’m not telling you now because this is a guilt-trip either so stop looking like that.”

Raúl blinked, confused, and David couldn’t blame him because he hadn’t been looking weird at David or anything. It was just David couldn’t exactly look at Raúl and David was going to bang his head into the doorway now. He was fucking this up so very badly.

“I was going to tell you anyway—I’ve been trying to tell you since maybe you threw that coffee at me, but I have to tell you now because he’s back. But it’s not because I’m trying to make you not go with him. I don’t care what you do with him.” Then David hissed and banged his head again. He put up his hand and dragged his nails down his cheek. “No, who am I fucking kidding? I fucking care. But I also want you to be fucking happy, to just not _look_ like that, like you’re dying all over again every fucking second, because I love you. Fuck!”

The wood might have actually cracked that time. Or it could have been David’s skull.

“I just want you to be happy,” David muttered, dazed. “Whatever the fuck that takes. Because you’re as lousy at it as I am about telling you the nice things I should tell you, because fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

“David!” Suddenly Raúl was up by David and forcing him off the doorway. He grunted when David shoved at him but just shouldered it off, grabbing David’s shoulder. He made David turn and then David had to look at him, and Raúl got both hands around David’s head just to make sure of that, the bastard. He was looking into David’s eyes and he looked fucking gorgeous. “David. You’re going to—you _have_. You’ve bashed open your lip.”

So that was why David’s mouth felt all wet. He started to move his hand, but Raúl touched his lip first. David winced and Raúl took his fingers away so David could see the blood on them. Then Raúl looked at that too, standing back a little. His other hand dropped to David’s shoulder.

“You’re crazy,” Raúl said after a moment, meditative. He rubbed his bloody fingers together.

David slumped against the jamb. Fuck his lip, the rest of him already hurt and it’d only been about two minutes. “I love you.”

Raúl looked up. He frowned. Then he went solemn. He opened his mouth and David turned away, not wanting to hear it.

“You’re—” Raúl rammed his hand against David’s shoulder so David twisted back to face him “—and you’re a complete _idiot_.”

Then he grabbed David’s head again and kissed the hell out of David. It surprised David so much that he actually tried to say so, and ended up choking on Raúl’s spit. He had to jerk his head away and cough into his hand, and yeah, he agreed with Raúl there. He was an idiot.

He turned back and Raúl was sighing at him, but smiling and sighing. Raúl touched David’s cheek just by David’s mouth, then bent forward and pressed their lips lightly together. Then he moved back and he had David’s blood on his mouth. He didn’t bother to wipe it off. “I’m not taking Fernando back. He said it was over and I thought he meant it. I—I _lived_ like he meant it, and he can’t just take it back now. It doesn’t work like that.”

“But you love him,” David said.

The smile went off Raúl’s face. He pressed his lips together, then hitched up his shoulders. “Well, yes. I did.” His eyes ran over David’s face, uncertain. Then he settled on something and his jaw firmed, his shoulders set back. “I still…well, I care enough about him that I wasn’t happy with you punching him. But that’s over. And you—you’re psychotic and rude and you have color-coded spreadsheets about how I do my grocery-shopping, but I’m with you now. I want to be with you. I’m not leaving, I don’t want to leave, I want you. All right?”

David gulped air for a couple seconds before his voice came back, creaky and low. “Okay.”

Raúl smiled again. He leaned in and David put his hands on Raúl’s sides, and a blast of stereo hit them right before their lips would have touched.

_…sad look upon your face! I should have changed that stupid lock, I should have--_

David thumped his head against the jamb, then watched Raúl screw up his face in exasperation.

“Gaynor’s version is the gold standard, okay? Why would you go messing with perfection like that?”

“Look, I never got you guys at all, but isn’t this more…well, appropriate for Mori? I mean, listen to the lyrics. Raúl just said he’s not leaving.”

“I’m going to kill them,” David said, starting to twist out from under Raúl.

Raúl tugged him back. David stared at the man, then yanked at his arm, and Raúl flat-out squashed David against the jamb. And stuck his tongue in David’s mouth, his hands going up to thread into David’s hair, and David grabbed the other man and kissed him back, forgetting about the music.

There was a weird beeping noise. “I don’t have porn music! I have…I have…um, Prince, maybe? Or what about NIN?”

“Porn? This is still the romantic bit. We need like, violins and stuff.”

Raúl dragged himself back, then put his forehead against David’s shoulder. “All right, now kill them,” he muttered.

“I love you,” David grinned. He pecked Raúl on the temple and Raúl looked up, then smiled. They smiled at each other and David felt like he’d done it all right for once.

Then Raúl moved out of the way, and David went to go kill the music. They didn’t need that shit anyway.


End file.
